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Musical Chairs

Between 1995 and 2003, Harmonix Music Systems failed to turn
a profit. The following two years were slightly profitable,
but it was in 2006 that Harmonix hit the big time with the
release of Guitar Hero.

So what's next for Harmonix? GamesIndustry.biz sat
down with CEO Alex Rigopulos at the DICE Summit last week to
find out, and to discuss what he thinks the future holds for
the Guitar Hero series.

Alex Rigopulos: I would not say I was surprised,
actually. When it became clear that Guitar Hero was beginning
to snowball, I expected the big publishers to wade into the
ring at that point. I didn't know which it would be.

No, we didn't. The norm is, whoever's writing the cheques
owns the IP. If we'd said, ‚Hey, keep your
money, we'll just finance this game on our own,' that would
have been a different conversation.

But they were coming to us as company that was basically the
same size as us, and they were writing the cheques to finance
the game. And betting the farm on the game. So I think
they're rightfully the owner of that IP.

Q:
What did you think of the news that the names Guitar Villain
and Drum Villain have been trademarked?

Just because they've filed a trademark registration, doesn't
actually mean they plan to create games with those names. For
example, they could be locking up those names so that someone
else can't use them to create competitive products with kind
of a different take on it.

Q:
Tony Hawk developer Neversoft will be producing the third
instalment in the Guitar Hero series. How do you think they
will do?

It's hard to say. What's clear is those guys are really
talented, capable game developers. They don't have experience
in the area of music games, so I think they'll have some
challenges.

But they're really talented guys, and the franchise is in
capable hands. And a lot of the hard design problems of
Guitar Hero have been solved. I think those guys are capable
of taking it and running with it in a way that fans of the
franchise will be happy with.

Q:
Were you concerned when your publisher was sold and you lost
the license? Or did you already have a strong relationship
with MTV at that point?

Nothing was comfortable about last year. Because of what was
happening with Guitar Hero, it was a very emotionally intense
year. What was apparent was that our world was changing.
After a decade of trying, music games were finally exploding
in the US.

That meant a number of parties were going to come into play,
to try and stake out territory in that area. So it was
actually a very tense, complicated year for us.

Q:
Last year, Guitar Hero picked up five awards at the DICE
Summit. How did that feel?

First, I was totally stunned. It was early enough at that
point, in February, we really didn't know it was going to
become a hit game yet. We knew it was going to be more
successful than any of our previous music games, it was still
early enough that it was an exciting time, but the way it was
all going to play out was not at all clear.

Q:
Isn't business inherently un-rock and roll?

It depends on how you approach it. I think a lot of people
view, for example, a business negotiation as a tug of war
where the idea is to gain the greatest advantage over the
person you're dealing with.

Philosophically, I approach business a very different way.
For me, it's all about setting up a framework in which two or
more parties can enter into and just rock and roll together.

Just say, ‚Look, instead of fighting over this
or that number, let's just try to set up a framework where
both of us are just motivated to go crazy, and just knock
this f**king thing out of the park.' When you take that
approach to business, it doesn't feel like your at war with
your business partners.

Q:
Did you ever imagine that you'd be an executive at MTV?

It's funny, but really early on at Harmonix, when people were
asking us, ‚Well, if you were to end up getting
acquired someday, who might that be?' Actually, MTV. Even ten
years ago, MTV was on that short list.

Q:
So what's next for Harmonix?

All I would say is that Guitar Hero is just the tip of the
iceberg. I really think that music games are going to become
a hugely important facet of music entertainment in general.
Being able to play with music is going to be how people come
to expect to enjoy music that they love.

This is the change in the world that Harmonix will be
attempting to catalyse over the next several years, through a
number of projects we're working on.

Q:
What about creation? Would it be interesting for people to
create music, through games?

Absolutely. That's absolutely something that we're going to -
over time, and in ways that make sense - reintegrate into our
games.